“I think that people are people. They’re human beings, and they have equal rights. It doesn’t matter how good looking they are or how tall they are or how fat they are, they’re human beings and they have rights,” she says.

“I’ve always felt that, as a human rights person, we’re all people and we should be treated with respect and dignity. That’s it.”

She speaks boldly about her beliefs, but Schmeiser has a storied history of pushing for equal rights – one that lends credence to her words.

Schmeiser’s working life is a web in the field of law, including time in regular practice as

a lawyer, as a director of research at the Law Reform Commission of Saskatchewan, and as a founding member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission representing the prairie provinces.

Earlier this year, she was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit for her contributions to the province and the nation as a whole.

The award, which honours those who have made confident strides forward for Saskatchewan, is in many ways a culmination of her life’s work. In Schmeiser’s mind, however, it was her time as a special adviser on matrimonial property to the Saskatchewan Department of the Attorney General that had the largest influence on her being given the Order of Merit.

It was this position which led to what is arguably the most notable achievement of her career, in which Schmeiser made recommendations to legislation that helped to create Saskatchewan’s trail-blazing Matrimonial Property Act in 1980. The piece of legislature effectively re-wrote the principle behind property ownership in the context of marriage.

Schmeiser and her peers’ work on the piece of legislation transformed marriage from a legal perspective, into a union not only of family but also of possessions and property.

The change was one which protected partners, in the event of divorce, who did not bring an income into the home.

“You think about the matrimonial property act and how that impacted our society in general – the principal that a marriage is a partnership, including on a property level. It’s not just a partnership for the children; it’s a partnership for everything,” said Nancy Hopkins, who worked with Schmeiser during the latter’s time as director of continuing legal education for the Law Society and is a partner at the McDougall Gauley law firm.

“That’s profoundly impactful for the society as a whole. That was a really big thing, not just for Saskatchewan but for the country.”

The ruling was a major step forward for equal rights among married partners in Canada, and was used as a model for similar developments nationwide in the following years.

The Matrimonial Property Act, which was passed unanimously before the legislature, was born as an answer to the public outcry resulting from two legal cases which left the matriarchs of the Murdoch and Rathwell families destitute.

These women, who had spent years raising their families and toiling as farmhands, were awarded nothing upon divorce simply because the law dictated that the courts would side with whoever had made direct financial contributions to the land title.

“They were cases where the wife was not mentioned on the title of the land, and she’d worked all her life with the husband,” Schmeiser said.

“Come divorce, he could just sluff her off – give her nothing – and all her work was nothing.”

Louise Simard, who co-authored the Matrimonial Property Act with Schmeiser, emphasized that it was a positive move for anyone who was not the primary stakeholder in a family’s land ownership, regardless of their sex. In practice, however, the act proved to foremost be a monumental shift for the legions of women who had chosen to forego a career in favour of taking care of their family.

“It gave women who were in the home some economic power that they never had before. It’s very significant from that point of view,” Simard said.

Schmeiser’s decision to focus on law may have come from her own tenacious youth – “You should be a lawyer, because you’re always analyzing everything and you’re crossexamining everybody,” she recalls being told as a child – but the seeds were planted in her own early taste for the world of education.

As a child, she was taught early on to appreciate school and to take as much from it as possible.

“I was a hell of a student from the day I started school. I went in grade one, and it was like the world had opened up. All of a sudden I was having crayons and art and nature study and dinosaurs – the world. I just loved school because there was so much to learn,” she said.

As one of six children to immigrant parents, Schmeiser was lucky enough that her family’s farming operation had grown robust by time she started looking into post-secondary education. As a result, she was steadfastly encouraged to pursue whatever dreams she had her sights on.

Including Schmeiser, there were only three women enrolled in her year of the law program at the University of Saskatchewan. When the other two shifted schools prior to the start of year two, she took it as an opportunity to pull ahead of the boys and seize her place at the head of the class – regardless of gender politics.

“I knew what I was doing. I knew that I had brains to conquer the guys that I was with. There were really some smart guys in our class, and I can’t take that away from them,” she said.

“I decided I was going to be top of the class, and that was going to be it.”

In 1957 she graduated from the College of Law with great distinction and a gold medal signifying her place at the head of her class. Just six weeks prior to receiving her first degree – she would go on to study philosophy as well, which she calls a natural companion to law – Schmeiser welcomed her daughter, Mary Ellen, into the world.

The child would be the first in Schmeiser’s own line of six, all of whom have become her own personal legacy.

Becoming a mother had its own challenges for Schmeiser, but the experience didn’t slow her down. The following years took her through time as a professor at the U of S, as a practicing lawyer, as president of the Saskatoon Bar Association and even a stint as a judge before a brain condition pushed her into retirement 20 years ago. Through it all, she kept her children at the forefront of her thoughts.

“It was up to me, and I really felt an onus to those children. In my mind, whatever I did, the children had to come first. I brought them into the world, and I figured it was up to me to bring them along and make worthwhile citizens of them,” she said. “I’m really proud of them. I really admire my children. They’ve all done well.”

Looking back, Schmeiser doesn’t mince words when talking about the advantages she’s had in life. She mentions an element of “luck” which allowed her both the upbringing and education to do whatever she’s wanted in life. It’s a perspective which afforded her the chance to spend her life trying to bring the same opportunities she had to everyone, regardless of who they were or what society expected of them.

“I always fought, and always in my mind was that we’re all equal and everyone should give it their best. I hate – I guess I can say that – I hate discrimination,” Schmeiser said.

“Opportunities just presented themselves where I could go and do something, and I hope that I took advantage of them.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.